1. Field of Related Art
The present disclosure is generally related to job/task processing in a network environment, and more particularly, to a system and method for redistributing resources within an electronic device environment based on burstiness characteristics.
2. Description of Related Art
“Multi-function” machines or multifunction devices (MFDs) have become familiar in offices and in home computing environments. Whereas, previously, functions such as copying, printing, and facsimile transmission have been performed by single dedicated copiers, printers, and facsimiles respectively, a multi-function machine may typically be capable of providing all such functions and more in a single machine. Typically, such a multi-function machine may include a single print engine, which may serve to output copies, prints, or received facsimiles; as well as a single input scanner which may serve to record data from original images for use in copying, facsimile transmission, and retention of input image data to a predetermined location in a computer memory. The MFDs may not merely be general purpose machines. Instead, MFDs may be processors dedicated to special purpose tasks/jobs, and capable of being leveraged for distributed computations. However, several types of electronic devices may include processors dedicated to special purpose tasks/jobs, and capable of being leveraged for distributed computations.
Distributed computing is a field that studies distributed systems. A distributed system may consist of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers may interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal. A computer program that runs in a distributed system may be referred to as a distributed program, and distributed programming may be the process of writing such programs. A distributed system may have a common goal, such as solving a large computational problem.
Since electronic devices are universally used, it would be useful to enable task/job distinguishment/discrimination among a plurality of electronic devices and to treat such tasks/jobs associated with the electronic devices differently based on a variety of factors, such as burstiness data and priority data. For example, some electronic devices and/or local jobs may be submitted directly to an electronic device. Other jobs, such as large optical character recognition (OCR) jobs, are very resource and time-consuming and often take several minutes to complete, particularly for complex documents. The electronic devices receiving the jobs/tasks may need to complete both kinds of jobs/tasks in a timely fashion. In such environments, it may be necessary to reduce preemption rates in order to efficiently process all jobs simultaneously.
Thus, while it is known that electronic devices may be idle for high percentages of time, thereby wasting good computing resources, electronic devices, on the other hand, also need the collective totality of those resources for intensive image/document related processing during the busy times, thus operating together on various kinds of tasks. It may be desirable to process all tasks simultaneously, while reducing preemption and makespan rates.